Search This Blog

Without the right to communicate and democratisation of communication, the right to life, liberty, freedom of speech and expression is meaningless.It attempts to keep track of traditional media, offline media and digital media that faces the onslaught of monopolistic tendencies and is wary of localisation of media. It is part of Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL) For Details: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/mediavigil/info

‘Medianet’ and ‘Private Treaties’ phenomena

The report of that 2 member subcommittee of the Press Trust of India, authored by Paranjoy Guha-Thakurta and Srinivas Reddy:

The ‘Medianet’ and ‘Private Treaties’ phenomena
In pursuing its quest for profits, it can be argued that certain media
organizations have sacrificed good journalistic practices and ethical
norms. Individual transgressions — reporters and correspondents being
offered cash and other incentives, namely paid-for junkets at home or
abroad in return for favourable reports on a company or an individual –
were, until recently, considered more of an aberration than a norm. News
that was published in such a manner was suspect because of the fawning
manner in which events/persons were described while the reports gave an
impression of being objective and fair. The byline of the journalist was
stated upfront. Over the years such individual transgressions became
institutionalised.

In the
1980s, Bennett, Coleman Company Limited (BCCL), publishers of the Times
of India (TOI) group of publications started changing the rules of the
Indian media game. Besides initiating cut-throat cover-price
competition, marketing was used creatively to make BCCL one of the most
profitable media conglomerates in the country – it currently earns more
profit than the rest of the publishing industries in the country put
together though as a corporate group, the STAR group has in recent years
recorded a higher annual turnover in particular years.

The media phenomenon that has caused
considerable outrage of late has been BCCL’s 2003 decision to start a
“paid content” service called Medianet, which, for a price, openly
offers to send journalists to cover product launches or
personality-related events. When competing newspapers pointed out the
blatant violation of journalistic ethics implicit in such a practice,
BCCL’s bosses argued that such “advertorials” were not appearing in
newspapers like the TOI itself, but only in the city-specific colour
supplements that highlight society trivia rather than hard news. (There
was another, more blatant justification of this practice not just by
BCCL but other media companies that emulated such a practice after BCCL
started it. If public relations (PR) firms are already “bribing”
journalists to ensure that coverage of their clients is carried, what
was wrong then with eliminating the intermediary – in this instance, the
PR agency – it was argued.

(Besides Medianet, BCCL devised another
“innovative” marketing and PR strategy. In 2005, ten companies,
including Videocon India and Kinetic Motors, allotted unknown amounts of
equity shares to BCCL as part of a deal to enable these firms to
receive advertising space in BCCL-owned media ventures. The success of
the scheme turned BCCL into one of the largest private equity investors
in India. At the end of 2007, the media company boasted of investments
in 140 companies in aviation, media, retail and entertainment, among
other sectors, valued at an estimated Rs 1,500 crore. According to an
interview given by a senior BCCL representative (S. Sivakumar) to a
website (medianama.com) in July 2008, the company had between 175 and
200 private treaty clients with an average deal size of between Rs 15
crore and Rs 20 crore implying an aggregate investment that could vary
between Rs 2,600 crore and Rs 4,000 crore.

It is a separate matter that the fall in
stock-market indices in 2008 robbed some of the sheen off the “private
treaties” scheme for the BCCL management. While the value of BCCL’s
holdings in partner companies came down, the media company had to meet
its commitments to provide advertising space at old “inflated”
valuations which also had to be shown as assessable taxable income for
BCCL on which corporation tax is levied.

Even as the private treaties scheme was
apparently aimed at undermining competition to the TOI, a number of the
newspaper’s competitors as well as television channels started similar
schemes. The “private treaties” scheme pioneered in the Indian media by
BCCL involves giving advertising space to private corporate
entities/advertisers in exchange for equity investment – the company
officially denies that it also provides favourable editorial coverage to
its “private treaty” clients and/or blacks out adverse comment against
its clients.

While BCCL representatives denied
receiving money for providing favourable editorial space, the integrity
of news was compromised. In advertisements published in the Economic
Times and the TOI celebrating the success of the group’s private
treaties, on December 4, 2009, the Mumbai edition of the newspapers
published a half-page colour advertisement titled “How to perform the
Great Indian Rope Trick” and cited the case of Pantaloon. What was being
referred was how Pantaloon’s strategic partnership with the TOI group
had paid off. The advertisement read: “…with the added advantage of
being a media house, Times Private Treaties, went beyond the usual role
of an investor by not straining the partner’s cash flows. It was because
of the unparalleled advertising muscle of India’s leading media
conglomerate. As Pantaloon furiously expanded, Times Private Treaties
(TPT) ensured that (it) was never short on demand. The TPT has a better
phrase for it — business sense.”

In many media organizations, news is
sought to be distinguished from material that is paid for, called
advertisements or “advertorials”, by using different or distinctive
fonts, font sizes, boundaries and/or disclaimers such as “sponsored
feature” or even the letters “advt” printed in a miniscule font size in a
corner of the advertisement – which may or may not escape the attention
of the reader. However, in certain instances, even a fig-leaf of a
disclaimer was done away with. Whereas BCCL representatives have often
argued that the companies private treaties scheme is open to public
scrutiny since the companies in which BCCL has picked up stakes is in
the public domain and listed on its official website, the influence such
companies wield on editorial content is a matter of contention and
debate.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Note: Procedural Establishments Under The Code Of Criminal Procedure, 1973: Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 gives protection to a person who is still a Public Servant at the time the prosecution is launched, and also when he is no longer a public servant. This is to protect the Public Servant from a case being filed against him after his retirement. When the government servant or the employee is not removable from his office without the sanction of the Central Government, then the same is necessary. Sanction under this section is not necessary before a Public Servant could be prosecuted for an offence of bribery under Section 161 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. There are three facets in the consideration of the protection given by Section 197 of the Cr.P.C. to the acts done by public officers. (i) The act complained attaches to it the official character of the person doing it; (ii) The official character or status of the accused gave him an opportunity of doing the…

Press ReleaseQuestionable and illegal UIDAI completes four yearsMaj Gen S.G.Vombatkere, VSM tell President that UID is extra-legal,
unethical, coercive
New Delhi, 28 Jan, 2013: Prime
Minister headed Cabinet Committee on UID related matters (CCUIDRM) which also
deal with National Population Register (NPR) has ensured that Unique
Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) continues to complete its four years
of existence without any legal basis and without disclosing that UID database
and NPR database is being merged with the electoral database. UIDAI was created
by a notification of Planning Commission dated January28, 2009.The notification is attached. As of as on
January 2, 2013, Cabinet Committee on
Unique Identification Authority of India related issues includes Prime
Minister, Sharad Pawar, Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Food Processing
Industries, P. Chidambaram, Minister of Finance, Sushilkumar Shinde, Minister
of Home Affairs, Mallikarjun Kharge, Minister of Labour and …

At a program to mark the 76th birth anniversary of late Prabhash Joshi, well known columnist and former editor of Nayi Duniya, Jansatta and Indian Express, speaker after speaker demanded the formation of Third Press Commission. The program was organised on July 15 at Satyagrah Mandap, Raj Ghat by Prabhash Parampra Nyas and Gandhi Smriti awam Darshan Samiti.

It has come to light that the efforts of senior journalists like Ram Bahadur Rai, Ram Sharan Joshi and Kuldeep Nayar have been demanding setting up of the Third Press Commission from the Manmohan Singh Govt but due to resistance from the de facto head of the state, it has not been constituted so far.

Press Council of India in its report of 2001 had also recommended setting up of a Third Press Commission during Justice PB Swant's tenure. Justice G.N. Ray, the Press Council chairman also recommended it in his speech in 2009 in Kolkata.

In July 2011, at a function in Indore too, journalists marched in the streets demanding…